14 August 2014 4:24 PM

Mr Erdogan Changes Trams

‘Paulus M’ rightly points out that the Spectator discussion on Iraq never got round to the huge, looming problem of Turkey. I like to think that I have been ahead of most British journalists in grasping that something momentous is taking place in that fascinating and important country. I have visited it twice on assignment, and have long mocked the ‘Economist’ Magazine for its ridiculous description of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government as ‘mildly Islamist’.

Here’s an article I wrote four years ago ( I was amused that some readers disbelieved the description of Fatih, or doubted that the black-clad women I saw – and who were pictured by the photographer accompanying me - were Turkish. In fact a Turkish colleague had taken me to the district to illustrate the growth of this sort of Islamic expression in Istanbul).

Even the ‘Economist’ has now dropped this absurd designation of ‘Mildly Islamist’ , though it has never fully acknowledged just how repressive and despotic Mr Erdogan is, and how much more so he is becoming. Funnily enough it was not his absurd show trials and accusations of ludicrous impossible plots (the ‘Ergenekon Affair’), nor even the imprisonment of journalists and cowing of the media, which turned opinion among naïve Western liberals . It was Mr Erdogan’s repression of a protest against the destruction of a treasured and much-loved park, and his menacing behaviour when challenged, which seemed to alter matters. During subsequent protests, Mr Erdogan’s state, like that of our friends in Kiev, has 'killed its own people’ but without producing the wave of righteous wrath which this action brings about when done by regimes of which we disapprove.

In which case, of course, it isn’t really our reason for disapproving of them. Always hunt for such anomalies. You will then be able to expose alleged reasons for action as what they really are, pretexts. And you will be able to penetrate the disguises in which history advances itself.

This has been a particularly strange disguise. When I wrote my article in 2010, Mr Erdogan seemed genuinely keen on good relations with Iran and Syria. Since then, he has veered in a completely different direction, more or less openly helping the attempt to overthrow Syria’s President Assad, having first had a public row with him. This, it seems to me, must put him much closer to Saudi Arabia than to Iran, and the two are pretty much mutually exclusive. Since Turkey is very much a Sunni rather than a Shia Muslim country (though it has an Alevi minority who are close to Shia Islam) , and since Turkey’s days of imperial glory gave it control over what is now Saudi Arabia (not to mention Syria, Iraq, Lebanon Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and a large chunk of south-eastern Europe) , and since Ottoman Istanbul was also the seat of the Sunni Caliphate until Ataturk abolished it in 1924, these are all profoundly sensitive matters.

The great paradox of Turkey was that its turn to the West under Ataturk was undemocratic and repressive. So when the EU began courting Turkey, it demanded the dismantling or weakening of Ataturk’s army-backed Deep State – just the sort of bright idea the ‘Economist’ would support.

Alas, the more democratic and free from the army Turkey became, the more Islamic it became. And so democracy has been used ( as it so often is used) as a means to a stronger state, though of a different kind.

Mr Erdogan famously said a very important thing back in the mid-1990s when he was just Mayor of Istanbul (to a journalist from the newspaper Milliyet) : ‘Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.’ ( Istanbul, I should note here, has some very fine trams, though they don’t actually go all that far before you have to get off and find some other less smooth and modern means of travelling).

Imagine the fuss that would be made if Vladimir Putin said any such thing. Turkey is just as important as Russia, and indeed many more British people are familiar with it than will ever visit Russia. But Mr Erdogan’s illiberal and cynical outbursts and actions are forgiven because he is (so far) a friend of the liberal globalist movement. Mr Putin’s are not because he is not. Here’s another anomaly, clue to another pretext.

Mr Erdogan’s words about the tram are even more startling than his verses about Minarets and Bayonets, featured in the article to which I link.

And now that he has (almost unnoticed by a one-track British media) become the directly-elected President of Turkey, with new executive powers ( potentially despotic) coming his way, I reckon he is unstoppable. In many ways his switch from premier to president parallels Mr Putin’s. But there is so much less concern.

He is already making messianic orations about how a new Turkey has been reborn from the ashes of the old.

One of the few accounts of him which really illustrates his menace appeared in a leader in the ‘Independent ’ . It noted : ‘The polls put him well ahead of his two rivals, a septuagenarian ex­diplomat and a young ethnic Kurd, which is not surprising, as the public has not learnt much about either candidate. Figures for last month showed that while Mr Erdogan received 533 minutes of airtime on state television to make his pitch, his two rivals got three minutes and 45 seconds respectively.

‘That farcically lopsided allocation of media coverage is only one of many indications that Turkey is morphing into a Russian-­style "shell" democracy, in which managed plebiscites mask the essentially autocratic character of a system containing few or no checks and balances.’

It added : ‘Like Vladimir Putin, Turkey's strongman specialises in the rhetoric of "us and them"; in his case, railing against a strange and unlikely combination of Jews and supporters of the US­ based Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen, who, he insists, are plotting to destroy him. Lest anyone dismiss this as hot air, it should be noted that Mr Erdogan has made good use of these alleged conspiracies to ram through key changes, purging institutions of his opponents, starting with the army and police. When he began putting generals on trial, Western governments were inclined to applaud, seeing the Turkish armed forces as over-­fond of politics and their own privileges. But the purges have continued to the point where the only serious resistance to Mr Erdogan's whims now comes from the judges, who in April bravely struck down his attempt to ban the use of social networks.

‘This is where Turkey's foreign friends should really start to worry, because if - or rather when - he becomes head of state, Mr Erdogan will be able to nominate judges and sap the Supreme Court's ability to oppose him. It gets worse, because Mr Erdogan also plans to transform the hitherto largely ceremonial presidency into the beating heart of government, with the power to appoint ministers and dissolve parliament.’

Isabel Hunter, writing in the ‘Independent on Sunday’, gave a flavour of the man which confirms much of what Turks have told me (in many cases in private conversations which they did not wish to have quoted) :

‘During the election campaign, state media has been accused of favouring Mr Erdogan. Yesterday, the editor of a leading Turkish newspaper resigned after Mr Erdogan criticised the news coverage of the paper's owner, Dogan Media Group.

‘In a separate incident last week, Mr Erdogan lashed out at correspondent Amberin Zaman, calling her a "shameless militant woman disguised under the name of a journalist". She was accused of insulting Islam and Muslims and told she should "know her place". Yesterday another prominent Turkish journalist, Mehmet Baransu, was detained, reportedly as part of a crackdown on dissenting journalism.’

If Vladimir Putin behaved in this fashion, it would not be on page 27.

I must confess to being puzzled by Mr Erdogan’s foreign-policy trajectory - swerving towards Teheran and then towards Riyadh, and incidentally crashing into Israel (once a Turkish ally) on the way - just as I am puzzled by his very successful moves towards integrating the country’s Kurds (previously a harried minority) into Turkey as a whole. Does he hope to integrate them fully, or is he ready to contemplate a nominally independent Kurdistan under some sort of Turkish ‘protection’? I have no idea. It is a thing to watch, and Mr Erdogan is a man to watch. He’s nearly reached the end of his tram ride, as far as I can see. I wonder what sort of vehicle he will use for the rest of his journey?

Share this article:

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Your warnings about Erdogan have been interesting, and in time proved correct. Now here we are in January 2015 finding that he is stirring up hostility against us and blaming the West for the terrorist killings in Paris. Yes, of course he will easily be able to mobilise Muslim opinion against us (that is his right) but we in the West should be in no doubt that this man is not our friend. As Peter has warned us, the western suit is a masquerade.

During my first year at university in the late 1970s I took an ancillary course in politics. The lecturer (probably a professor, I don't remember) was an expert in Turkish politics. Reading about it the issue was how democracy could be promoted in that country, on the assumption, I suppose, that it would promote development along western lines and copper-fasten Ataturk's modernization. Even then the main problem was that any widening of democracy brought about the election of Islamic candidates who wanted to reverse that modernization.

This same lecturer would often say things like "The British people would vote for lamp-posts if they were told". He was unpopular among the students, who didn't approve of this kind of thing and took themselves seriously. It was as if his irreverence was a criticism of themselves. I like to think it was.

If he were still teaching now I'd be interested to see what they wrote about him on Wikipedia, not out of any hope of enlightenment but just to see if I'd guessed correctly.

An interesting example of Erdogan ploughing his own furrow is the news that Turkey will step up to replace EU food exports to Russia that the Russians have embargoed. Of course Turkey is not an EU member and if it carries out its threat it will be making that plain.Relations between Turkey and Russia were generally good throughout the 20th century despite ideological differences,the Bolsheviks backed Attaturk's revolution against its enemies Britain and France after the Great War for example.Turkey in the 21st century looks like regaining the position it lost in the 19th and 20th to the West. It has a rising population, a diverse economy ,cultural confidence and is in a key strategic position.This is just another part of the modern jigsaw, a world that is literally coming up for grabs and will eventually be possessed by the strongest.

You rightly condemn the ghastly Erdogan, but continue to show not so grudging admiration for Putinism. There is no democracy in Russia; as you well know, media and judiciary are under state control and parliament functions purely as a rubber stamping house. Extreme nationalists are running policy and make no secret of their desire to take back Ukraine and Georgia. Both of which are desperate to be free of the clutches of their nightmare neighbour.

Very good article Mr Hitchens, the west does not realise the danger Mr Erdogan poses and they underestimate the level of his islamic devotion.

Mr Erdogans foreign policy aims are clear, he seeks to revive the Ottoman empire. Whilst the world watches Isis they miss the true danger that is Turkey under Erdogan, infact you will see that the west will clamour for turkish intervention in Iraq which is all part of erdogans plan to consolidate Turkish power in the middleeast.

It's very odd why Turkey puts up with ISIS on its border. Perhaps Erdogan has plans for another Ottoman Empire and allows ISIS to create chaos for Turkish intervention.
As a NATO member, what happens if Turkey provokes an attack by Iran or even Israel? Do we go to war?

Recip Tayyip Erdogen is clearly an autocratic dictator - using a stricter form of Islam to enforce his power. But Turkey, despite more than 90% of the people being nominally Moslems, deep down will remain a secular State and will one day revert to secularism with the State being bigger than religion. Perhaps Erdogen will have to die before that happens but Kemal Ataturk laid the foundations of the modern Turkish State and to that it will eventually return.

One cannot but like a man with ambition. Clearing out the augean stables.,
We pretty much are in need of such ambition .to clear out our rotten justice system .Westminster, and a cowardly press, even PH calls them that .
So Erdogan is not a mild Islamic follower, Is there such anywhere .Its like saying an atomic bomb is mildly antiseptic . In his case the saying power corrupts
is true. But it all started out with the best possible intentions. They always do.
But at least they are having elections .and still avid supports of joining the EU. God help us all.

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the moderator has approved them. They must not exceed 500 words. Web links cannot be accepted, and may mean your whole comment is not published.